MSPs embracing Cloud Management Platforms – The Success Recipe

As the current IT landscape takes a paradigm shift for MSPs, the cloud computing world continues to re-shape the market with transitions brewing and trends being defined.

Since public cloud platforms are essentially “a managed service” with availability defined by the vendors, the role of the MSPs, therefore, is to drive the adoption, governance, cost optimization, architecture reviews, security, and innovation for clients.

The challenges of an MSP during cloud journey

The most difficult challenge is to change the mindset from an on-premise world to a cloud-first world and re-train the entire workforce. The new-fangled IT trends including hybrid & multi-cloud management, demand for enhanced security, data backup and pose several challenges for MSPs.

It has really become harder over the past 5 years and is getting increasingly more difficult by the day to run the acquisition engine without a self-service platform.

The secret sauce of evolution

To grow from just being an MSP to a next-gen MSP, there are 3 key tenets:

We need to educate customers or even the potential ones on a proactive, continual basis by offering them advisory and consultancy services. MSP’s job is to transform themselves from a break-&-fix relationship to building a reliable rapport with the customers and not hide behind the curtains, letting the meter run.

Promote the use and evolution of cloud services from the customers perspective. For being a next-gen MSP, we believe in building a strong relationship with our clients by managing their services efficiently and productively which can only be done by leveraging a CMP.

From a technical standpoint, embracing the existing and emerging technology provides a competitive edge such as containerization, automated workflow management, data storage with data analyzing capabilities, and more. Next-gen MSPs are climbing the stack and drifting towards application-level services from the operating system layer.

The CEO’s take on expanding the cloud practice beyond managed services

A cloud management strategy or a platform must be in place as the cloud managed services market continues to grow.

To my mind, given the scale of cloud, the number of moving parts, and the number of public cloud vendors in place; it is becoming impossible to manage and deliver a seamless cloud experience to clients without a CMP. As the adoption grows this will become nearly impossible.

MSP needs a CMP to handle the demand for managing multi-cloud. With the adoption of a world-class CMP like Centilytics, Progressive Infotech have been able to extend its portfolio thus, witnessing a significant growth of more than 20% in the annual MSP consumption. – said the CEO, Prateek Garg

In my opinion, the trend that has shaped cloud management in the last few years is multi-cloud adoption. The perks of cloud management platforms are that they can help enterprises to manage, secure and optimize their public clouds like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform. For us, MSPs, Cloud Brokerage, Cost Optimization, and Governance are the crucial pieces to the management puzzle.

In my view, this is a part of the MSP offering and as the cloud adoption grows, clients will expect this as a “given” from MSPs.

Evaluation criteria for choosing a CMP

CMP is essentially defined by the 8 pillars of Gartner. However, the top 4 in my view are – Visibility, Cost Optimization, Automation, and Compliance.

I think an MSP or CSP cannot function without a CMP both from an internal management perspective and from the visibility standpoint; where we need to bring in transparency for the client – be it billing, reporting or governance.

The baseline to get ahead in this game

Hybrid and multi-cloud management, cost arbitrage, automation, and orchestration will be the top requirement to stay ahead in this game. In 2019 and the years to come by, businesses will grow with a sustained focus on cloud adoption, change management, and security solutions.

Prateek is an IT business strategist and an entrepreneur with a career spanning over 25 years. In 1998, Prateek laid the foundation of Progressive Infotech which has today risen to be a $10 million company under his leadership. He holds extensive work experience in the area of customer service delivery, making technology work for customers and human resource management. Described as a ‘Silent Performer’ by his peers and industry, Prateek is the pillar who has single-minded steered Progressive to sustain through thick and thin and move on to becoming a best-in-class organization.